Dir Nimród Antal
The good thing about the original 'Predator', was its sheer simplicity. A group of hardcore merc's, with custom made weaponry, pitted against an invisible alien, apparently also with custom made weaponry, in an inhospitable jungle environment (some pretty 'bad bush').
The bad thing about the original 'Predator' is that it spawned a mass of sequels, each progressively worse then the previous with a diabolical mating of the Aliens and Predator brands leading to ever lower depths of predictability and facre.
'Predators' is the latest offering. An attempt to regain the simplicity of the first film, it ends up being a parody of it because the film makers still felt the need for the one-upmanship that ruined all the previous sequels. The group of hardcore merc's, with custom made weaponry have been replaced by a choice selection of human killers, with custom weaponry, the Predators are back, only now we have a bigger, badder and much louder master race to contend with (they're so terrible they...*yawn* even hunt the normal predators) and the jungle is also back. Throw in a couple of plot twists, a funny Marlon Brando-as-fat-old-Colonel-Kurtz performance by Laurence Fishburn and off we go.
The film has some quiet moments of brilliance (blink and you'll miss them) and some moments of appalling predictability.
The big name star is Adrien Brody, and to his credit, he does a fairly decent job, but the real star of the film for me was the jungle itself. Some of the tree's and plants were great! There was also a nice matte painting of what looked like a crashed space ship but which turned out to be several abandoned mining machines. I also enjoyed Oleg Taktarov (shown above) as the Spetznaz Nikolai.
2 comments:
I enjoyed it as well, because it was a nearly carbon copy of the first one, which was also great.
Some notes from me:
#1. There are men in the IDF too. Based on sci-fi or drama, one would think they were all hot women.
#2. AA-12 Shotgun. Nice choice for the hero.
#3. Man portable minigun? Yeah, they sort of had to put that in.
#4. No messing around with the "meet-the-characters" stuff. Just freefall into action. Awesome!
#5. Yakusa samuri sword fight against a predator? Sold! I'll watch that every day of the week.
1-Yeah, but do you really want to see the men?
2-Agreed.
3-Yes, but it was a pointless addition as it didn't do any damage despite its awesome firepower. For a group of 'experts', they didn't even try to use that weapon to its full potential. And do Spetznaz really lug such great big weapons around into battle?
4-Agreed!
5-I'd have preferred if the Yak had won outright just to make a point as to how serioulsy dangerous a katana strike can actually be...
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